I’m often asked where do you start when researching a family tree. My answer is always the same – start with what you know and work from there. But what is it likely you already know? Most of us have, somewhere, the certificates of birth, marriage and/or death of one or more of our parents or grandparents with the information we need to get started […]
Our local church held an event recently where they asked brides who had been married in the church and who still had their dress if they would lend them for an exhibition. The invitations led to a superb display of 90 dresses from the 1950s to the present day. Those who no longer had their dress were invited to submit a photograph. There were plenty of […]
Sometimes when researching a family’s history, you come across some sad tales but, somehow, people survive and thrive against the odds. One such story was that of a young deaf and dumb girl, admitted to Donaldson’s Hospital in Edinburgh in August 1879. Her entry in the admission register states that she had an older sister and a younger brother, that her mother was dead and […]
Both Michael Parkinson and Cherie Blair have said they were told their ancestors were “too boring” for them to be included in a Who Do You Think You Are? programme. What exactly do they mean by “boring”? Is “boring” in terms of a television programme the same as “boring” to anyone else? The celebrities that have been featured have looked at a whole range of aspects of […]
Sometimes genealogical research is not about finding ancestors so much as finding out about one person’s life – however short it may have been. Over the last few years, for a couple of projects, I have researched the lives of some of the former pupils of a school in Glasgow where I look after the archives. One of these projects was to try learn some […]
I’ve just recently come back to looking at my paternal grandmother and her family. When I first looked (many years ago) I was put off because all the names were the same and I found it difficult to unravel who was who. You see, Grandma was born a Macleod from the Isle of Lewis. I managed to trace back a couple of generations but then […]
Family Tree Tales has been created as a space to explore the stories uncovered in over 30 years of researching family trees. Here you will be able to read about experiences in searching out elusive ancestors, about the people and paces from the past and about some of the less well known ways to search these people out. They didn’t live their lives just to […]